India and its hygiene trap

In his seminal book 'An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions', Nobel Laureate, economist Amartya Sen makes a case for India's many contradictions. He writes, "400 million Indians had (and still have) no electricity. Sanitation and public hygiene are awful, especially in the north: half of all Indians still defecate in the open, resulting in many deaths from diarrhea and encephalitis."

The open defecation numbers are at 600 million now. Definitely, the numbers (of those) who spit are higher. That's an alarming amount of bacterial churn, considering that there are 20 billion bacteria in your mouth and they reproduce every five hours.

Lee Kuan Yew would have enforced social isolation for those who spit. Fittingly, our very own scientist, ex-president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam once said in a speech that Indians would never litter in Singapore, or ask a policeman 'Do you know who I am?' in the US.

Spitting in India is a great leveller. From rolling down the Mercedes window and spewing a concoction of betel, to letting go on a lonely roadside by people of the streets, spitting is almost a constitutional right, rather a sad irony.
So why do so many Indians spit? (There are) Many reasons...

1. Our underpaid law enforcement soldiers are not able to enforce the laws they are aware of. The traffic police, drivers and watchmen themselves do not know where and how to answer nature's call, let alone tell others not to spit.

2. Swacch Bharat is not just a tagline but a mindset we need to tune into. Everybody sees a dirty environment and assumes that as it is already dirty, littering more is not going to make a difference. Social exclusion would have worked, provided 70% of the people never littered the streets, the rest would then have to change. We are on the reverse ratio. Hence, the herd mentality wins.

We can definitely start with schools and (by) educating our children. The pester power that a child can exert by asking his/her parents not to spit is underutilised by our law enforcers and over-utilised by consumer industries.
Can we be the change we wish to see? The question and the answer are unfolding on a daily basis in our society today and we, as a nation, can guide this towards better outcomes.

By Dr Ramakanta Panda, vice chairman-MD of the Asian Heart Institute